


roses picked under a full moon at midnight

by desastrista



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Mentions of Mental Hospitals, Mentions of Pedophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 09:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12208428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desastrista/pseuds/desastrista
Summary: Auguste was always the golden brother, academically successful and captain of the lacrosse team. In the wake of his sudden death, Laurent is adrift. But things start to change when his classmate Aimeric helps him understand that the strange things that keep happening to him are actually something much bigger than he realized: magic. Now Laurent must learn to control his power while at the same time navigating the world without his brother and his feelings for the new high school lacrosse captain Damen.Or: the one where Laurent and Aimeric try to solve their problems with magic, badly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Captive Prince Bang! Thank you to my wonderful artist, plushie (on tumblr as penguinplushie). [You can see the art she drew for this fic here.](http://penguinplushie.tumblr.com/post/165841159153/laurent-closed-his-eyes-he-tried-to-forget)
> 
>  
> 
> Also thanks to my very helpful beta reader Mels (on tumblr at Cp-tsoa-aaddtsotu-aftg-books). And another thank you to the mods for arranging this Bang! It's my first ever and I'm very excited.

Not that there would have been a good time to lose control of his powers, but all things considered, Laurent wished it hadn’t happened in third period English class.

Mr. Hypermandes could never make it through a complete lesson plan without getting distracted by some student questions. Everyone in the class knew this. If they were lucky, he would get distracted enough to forget to announce the homework for the day. And so with only a few minutes left until the bell, people were starting to get creative. Laurent had long ago accepted that the lesson was effectively over and had gotten his book out to read.

“Mr. Hypermandes, didn’t you say you had some announcements to make?”

_Cut off from his brothers, he strikes too short at Nisos_ , Laurent read. He had probably already read that sentence already. He blinked and tried to refocus.

“Something about the lacrosse team tryouts tomorrow?”

Laurent’s heart skipped a beat and his stomach gave a lurch. There was a knock at the window, as if it had been struck by a strong gust of wind.

_He strikes too short at Nisos…_

“Oh yes,” Mr. Hypermandes said, clearing his throat. “Thank you for the reminder. The tryouts are tomorrow! As you know, our school’s men’s lacrosse team has been the regional champions two years in a row. These are open tryouts, so anyone is invited to try to make it three years in a row! Come prepared!”

Laurent stopped reading. He closed his eyes. There was the sound of another dull thud from the window.

“Is that the wind?” he heard someone ask. “It must be really strong.”

“But it was so nice out earlier,” someone else muttered in disappointment.

But once Mr. Hypermandes had gotten on the subject, he was not so easily distracted. “This year our captain is Damen. This year is his senior year, and I have full confidence in him, although I think everyone at the school knows he has some awfully big shoes to fill.”

Laurent did not open his eyes. Why would he? He didn’t want to see all the people staring at him, or doing their best to pretend they weren’t. Everyone knew whose big shoes Damen was filling. Tragic, they would say to themselves in hushed tones, so tragic what happened, so young, so much promise, and you know the brothers were so close –

The window burst open with a clatter. Laurent’s eyes flew open. No one was looking at him; their attention was on the window, which now swayed helplessly back and forth on its hinges. Mr. Hypermandes had stopped talking. The whole room was buzzing.

“What happened?”

“It must have been the wind.”

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“That’s strange,” Mr. Hypermandes finally said. He had walked over and begun to fiddle with the latch, attempting to figure out what had caused the incident. “It must be broken. I’ll talk to the custodians about this, make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

While the class’s attention was on Mr. Hypermandes, Laurent stared at the clock. One minute left. Hopefully the window would keep Mr. Hypermandes distracted. Or maybe he would remember that he had homework to assign and would rush to finish that. Anything would be fine, anything at all, except more talk about the lacrosse team –

“Thank you, but I think I have it. Now, as I was saying –,” Mr. Hypermandes began. Laurent turned back to look at the teacher. A student had gotten out of his seat and was pointing to the latch, maybe trying to show how it might have been damaged. Most of the other students were staring or talking excitedly among themselves. The more prescient among them were looking at the clocks and mouthing their own silent countdown until freedom.

There was one exception.

Aimeric sat in the far corner. He wasn’t talking to anyone. He wasn’t distracted by the window or the clock. Instead, he was staring right at Laurent. There was no mistaking it. Laurent didn’t know why he would be staring. Aimeric and Laurent were not friends: they barely knew each other. Aimeric was in a few of Laurent’s classes and had been for the last two years, but they had never really talked.

But Aimeric was definitely staring at him. And a knowing grin had started to spread across his face.

Their eyes met briefly. Laurent scowled and closed his book with a little too much force.

The bell rang.

“Oh, damn, that’s the time, I forgot to mention – for tomorrow, please make sure you read –,” Mr. Hypermandes began, but it was too late. Students had already begun to shuffle out. Laurent grabbed his book. He did not look at Aimeric as he turned to go. It didn’t matter what Aimeric thought he knew, anyway. There was no way he could guess at the truth of what had happened. What Laurent had done.

Laurent left the room in a hurry.

 

 

It was a tremendous relief to Laurent that the next period was lunch. That was the best period of them all, because it was the only time during the school day that students were allowed to leave the grounds. Laurent had brought his lunch today and fully intended to take advantage of that freedom. He walked through the school’s front door and began the walk south. 

South of campus was a fairly residential area. It had nothing to recommend it but one simple fact, and that was the thing that was most important to Laurent right now: it was not the school grounds.

(The fact that it was the opposite direction from the school field probably helped too, but Laurent didn’t want to think about that.)

He had almost made it past the school lawn and onto the sidewalk when he heard a familiar voice say, “Laurent, wait up.”

Inwardly cursing the fact that he hadn’t walked a little faster, he turned around. “Aimeric,” he said, trying to feign surprise. “What are you doing here?”

That annoyingly knowing smile had not left Aimeric’s face. Laurent fought the urge to roll his eyes. Or perhaps ask Aimeric what he had done to get his face stuck with that expression.

“I liked what you did in Hypermandes’s class,” Aimeric said. His smile might be described as like the cat that got the canary, but that wasn’t quite right; it was the expression of a cat who had gotten the canary and knew there’d be more birds like it coming. Laurent stiffened. “Finally, someone found an actually creative way to stop him from assigning another chapter.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Laurent said automatically. He paused and asked, “Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, at the cafeteria or something?”

“I don’t have lunch for another period,” Aimeric answered. “But it doesn’t matter, this is more important.”

“Whatever you say,” Laurent turned back around to start walking again.

“Wait!” Aimeric called out again. “I’m serious. I know what you did, and I – I want to help.”

That was enough to get Laurent to stop. “What are you talking about?” he asked, disbelief bordering on incredulity that Aimeric was still trying to continue with this conversation. “Help me with what?”

“I know it was you!” Aimeric shot back. “You made that window fly open. You didn’t want Hypermandes to go on and on, so you created a distraction.”

“You’re crazy,” Laurent scoffed. “I was on the other side of the room, how could I have caused that latch to break?”

Aimeric, however, was not going to listen. “Stop lying!” he all but shouted, and like a child he stomped a foot in frustration.

Laurent was aware of a sudden change in the air. The birds nearby had stopped singing. The breeze – which had been nice enough, pleasant, but of course not nearly strong enough to open a window – vanished. Laurent felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“See, I know a little something about controlling the wind too,” Aimeric said. His voice was soft.

Laurent turned back to him. He glared at the other boy, as if he might somehow through sheer force of will convince him to stop talking.

Because, of course, talking about things you could do that were supposed to be impossible was how Laurent had ending up spending last summer in a mental hospital.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, in the most matter-of-fact tone he could summon on such short notice. He cast a furtive glance around. The lunch exodus was already over; there was no one around to eavesdrop.

“Really?” Aimeric asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Strange things that just happen to happen around you? A sense of power you can’t control.” Aimeric’s smile brightened as Laurent’s scowl deepened. “There was nothing natural about that window opening. I was right by it, felt nothing. And just when I start to wonder how that could be, I look over and see everyone is looking so surprised – except you. But of course, Mr. Hypermandes had been talking about the lacrosse team, and everyone knows that it was your brother who used to be captain –”

“Shut up,” Laurent said, his voice barely above a whisper. Its tone must have worked, because Aimeric did stop this time, and for one brief second his saccharine smile faded. But Laurent continued, his voice resuming its normal tone, “We don’t need to talk anymore about that stupid window. Whatever else you have to say, just get on with it,” and Aimeric’s smile was back in full force. 

“My dad travels a lot,” he said, speaking quickly as if afraid Laurent might cut him off again, “He always goes to rare book stores when he’s abroad, and he’s got quite a collection. And I’ve been reading through and I think it can help, you know, people like you or me –”

“And who exactly are people like you and me, Aimeric?” Laurent cut in quickly. He did not add: because I’m starting to think I don’t want to consider us being in a group together unless I absolutely have to.

“Why, witches, of course!” Aimeric exclaimed, his voice overflowing with delight, as if he had been dying to say the words from the beginning.

There was a silence as Laurent mulled over those words. Mulled over them a little bit more. Then he let out a short, bitter bark of laughter.

“You’re crazy,” he finally said. And he turned again to walk away.

“Listen,” Aimeric jumped forward to stop him. “What I’ve found – it’ll help control your powers, or whatever. Refine them. It’s already helped me a lot. Just – here. I’ll give you my number. And if you change your mind, just text me. I can hook you up.”

“You sound like a drug dealer,” Laurent muttered, but he still offered up his phone for Aimeric. “Fine, if it’ll make you go away faster. Now, I have to go eat and you have to – go back to class or whatever.”

Aimeric just shrugged at that particular piece of advice.

“Think about it,” was all he said to Laurent before finally retreating back to the school.


	2. Chapter 2

Laurent ate lunch in a small park not too far away from school, sitting under a tree, a good distance away from anyone else there. It was a decent meal overall. Families with small children brought their kids to play, and gave Laurent questioning looks that he scrupulously avoided.

That had been the worst part of being in the mental hospital; time outside had been so carefully rationed. Laurent had never been one for the outdoors – his skin burned too easily for that – but since he had been discharged he had made it a point to breathe in a little more fresh air whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Laurent had been admitted to the mental hospital when his mother walked into his room one day in June and had found the whole place turned upside down. Literally. His bed pointed towards the ceiling, the dresser was on its side, clothes and books were strewn everywhere and in the middle of it all sat Laurent, crying softly. His mom might have been willing to excuse it as the result of just another fit except for Laurent’s insistence that “he hadn’t done it” and “he had no idea how it happened”. Keep talking that way enough, and – in combination with “everything else we know that you’re dealing with, honey,” -- it became the recipe for a few months in Arles Behavioral Hospital.

At first, it had been a source of real confusion for Laurent. He knew, after all, that he was mentally quite fit. He was as confused as anyone how a strange power could have surged within him that was strong enough to overturn furniture and destroy a room like that. But when he tried to get answers to his questions, all he got were doctors and nurses with pitying smiles. Eventually he stopped asking.

The hospital was nice enough. There was a schedule. Things were clean. And his mother was right – Laurent had been dealing with a lot. He didn’t like talking with the therapists about the car crash, but they all nodded their head in sympathy and even sometimes managed to give him good advice. Things could have been much worse.

And in the evenings, when the lights had gone out, he closed his eyes and focused on moving things across the room. Nothing too big; nothing that would cause too many questions. Just enough that when it was time to wake up in the morning, he could look at the rug that wasn’t quite in the same spot it had been last night and feel a small sense of pride.

July came and went. The doctors said his progress was good but they were still worried about him. By the time August arrived, Laurent had started to worry about the next school year, so he made sure to stop talking about magic or powers or anything like that and start talking about recovery. He was released after a week.

The magic he had done since leaving the hospital was small. Just done to keep himself in practice. He had thought he had it under control. He had wanted to have it under control so badly.

Back in the park, he was nearing the end of his sandwich. He slowed down to savor the last few bites. Listened to the kids screaming and the parents trying in vain to shepherd them one way or another. Felt the breeze waft through his hair. The days were getting colder: this would be one of the last days of summer left.

He had to get back to school. He picked up his phone and looked at the contacts to see where Aimeric had entered his number.

Maybe Aimeric was right, and he knew something that could make Laurent less likely to lose control.

Or maybe magic was just something else to remember about the summer, and the changing of the seasons would leave it behind too.

 

 

As soon as Laurent had re-entered the hallways of his school, he resolved to go about his day as normal and delete Aimeric’s number before he headed home. He was doing a good job with this plan until just after fifth period, when Damen found him by his locker.

“Laurent, there you are.” Laurent heard Damen’s voice before he saw him. He had been kneeling to put his math book back inside his locker and almost dropped it at the sound. He turned around and looked up: Damen came into his vision in parts. The other boy was tall, much taller than even a senior had a right to be. And he was built like a tank. He was, in general, very hard to miss and it spoke volumes about how distracted Laurent had been by the lunchtime conversation that Damen had managed to sneak up on him.

Laurent made to stand up. “Yes,” he said, dryly. “This is my locker. I’m glad you noticed.”

Damen was not wearing his jersey today. No doubt he was saving it for tryouts tomorrow. Laurent tried not to make his relief too apparent. Instead, he frowned slightly and raised one eyebrow, trying to discourage any further conversation. But Damen was smiling as if Laurent had just made a joke.

Laurent’s frown deepened.

“I was wondering,” Damen began, and with a certain alarm Laurent noticed that his tone of voice had turned almost sheepish. “Well, the semester is just beginning and – I was wondering if you still wanted to do French lessons.”

Laurent was glad he had stowed his textbook away before Damen had begun talking. He would have dropped it if it had still been in his hands.

“French lessons,” he echoed.

“Yeah, I mean, I understand if you don’t want to –”

Last year, Damen had asked Laurent for help in French. He would come over once a week and they would talk and practice vocabulary. Laurent liked French, it was one of his best subjects. He hadn’t really thought twice about Damen asking his help for it.

“Don’t you think that Damen is a little too good at French to need a tutor, though?” Auguste had asked. When Laurent looked confused, Auguste had said, with a laugh, “I think he’s just doing it to get an excuse to see you each week. Clever, but not clever enough. I’ve got my eye on him.”

Laurent had told Auguste he was imagining things. The lessons continued.

Then came the car crash. Laurent took some time away from school. The lessons stopped. He didn’t see Damen anymore. Summer began. Damen texted him a few times in the beginning, asking him if he was okay, that kind of thing. But the only people that Laurent talked to that whole summer were his family and, after the incident with the flipped bed, the doctors and nurses. Even Damen had stopped texting after a while. Must have known it wouldn’t work out.

But that was all the past. In the present, Laurent hadn’t said anything in response and Damen was starting to look increasingly self-conscious.

“I know how difficult things must be for you and your family –,” he started. Laurent didn’t want to hear it.

“I’m busy,” he found himself saying.

“What?”

“I’m busy. Tonight. Sorry. Can’t. Maybe some other time.” Laurent shut the locker with more force than was strictly speaking necessary. “And I’ve got to get to class. History. You know how it is.”

Damen took a step back. “Yeah, of course. Well, some other time.”

Laurent smiled and nodded and turned sharply to walk to class. He got his phone out in the hallway and composed his message to Aimeric.

_Let’s do tonight._

Aimeric texted back a confirmation right away. He texted a few more times, but Laurent couldn’t be bothered to look at his phone for a few hours.


	3. Chapter 3

Aimeric had said that he could drive Laurent back to his house after school, but when classes were over Laurent learned that what Aimeric meant was his boyfriend could drive them both.

“This is Jord,” Aimeric said in a clipped tone, having already started to walk towards the car. “Jord, Laurent.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jord said, offering Laurent a handshake even as he trailed behind Aimeric. He looked a little familiar; Laurent had probably seen him around the hallways but they had never talked. If he had to guess, Laurent would say that Jord was likely in the class above him and Aimeric, so a senior.

When they got to the car, Aimeric got in the front seat right away while Jord manually unlocked Laurent’s door. It was an older model, but it looked well-maintained. “Sorry about the mess,” Jord said as Laurent took a seat. After a second, Laurent realized the mess Jord was apologizing for: a few rags on the ground and a neatly folded coverall.

“I’ve got a shift at the garage starting soon,” Jord explained. “But Aimeric says you guys probably won’t need me for a few hours.”

“Yeah, I think Laurent’s going to want to spend a bit of time in my dad’s library,” Aimeric said. He did not look up from his phone as he spoke; he appeared to be in the middle of texting.

“I can pick you up and drive you back.”

“I can just call my mom,” Laurent offered. He couldn’t help but add, with a somewhat reproachful tone, “Seems strange for you to come back to Aimeric’s just to drop me off.”

Jord just shrugged. “I don’t mind.” Aimeric had returned his attention back to his phone and appeared too engrossed to reply.

It turned out that Aimeric didn’t live too far from school. Now that Laurent knew where he lived, the house seemed hard to miss. It was the largest house on the block by a comfortable margin and looked like it was owned by a family that knew it. Jord pulled into the driveway, which was ostentatiously long and surrounded on both sides by flowering trees. After Laurent and Aimeric both got out, he gave them a wave as he left; Aimeric gave a distracted wave back.

“Are you ready to see the library?” he asked when Jord was gone, all of his attention suddenly on Laurent.

Laurent gave a curt nod. He couldn’t help but notice how empty that big driveway was – and once they were inside, how there were no signs of people anywhere in the house. “Is your family here?” he finally asked.

“My oldest brother just got promoted. Again. He lives a few hours away, and the family all went out to celebrate.” At Laurent’s raised eyebrow, Aimeric added. “Going would of course have been impossible for me, with school and all.” The sarcasm in his voice did little to mask the bitterness.

The idea of deliberately choosing to be home alone was a little strange to Laurent. Auguste had always been busy – with the lacrosse team most of the time, with debate club or other extracurriculars during the offseason – but he had always tried to be home for Laurent. And the summer afterwards, well, after everything that had happened, there was no way that Laurent’s parents were going to let him be alone in the house if they could help it.

Perhaps for Aimeric it was a kind of freedom. After all, sometimes Laurent liked being alone. But he did not envy Aimeric that kind of freedom.

He didn’t want to think about the subject too much.

“You said there was a library,” Laurent reminded Aimeric.

“Oh, right. It’s just upstairs.” Aimeric made his way to the foyer, where he started to climb the stairs. The stairs were an elegant, immaculate white marble. No hints of dirt or scruff anywhere to be found. Laurent had never seen a house look less lived in.

The library was in a wing just to the right of the stairs on the second floor. It was hidden behind a large oak door that Aimeric had to shove his shoulder against before it would finally open.

“My dad really doesn’t know what he has with this collection,” he said, once they were inside. It was a much bigger space than Laurent had expected, with every inch of the walls inside converted into bookshelves. The shelves were crowded: mostly with books, but every so often there’d be the odd jar filled with things that Laurent could not distinguish or a curious-looking instrument whose use Laurent could not guess. In the middle there were a few chairs; surrounding them were a few piles of books and loose stacks of paper. Actual signs of life, Laurent thought at first. It was only after a second did he realize that all these books were probably a sign of just how seriously Aimeric took this study. No wonder he had been so desperate to find someone to share it with.

“How long have you been reading this stuff?” Laurent asked, walking towards the closest pile of books on the floor and picking one off the top to inspect. It was an old tome bound in cracked leather: the gold-leaf cursive on its spine had faded and distorted almost past the point of recognition, but Laurent still knew the word “Grimoire” when he read it. A collection of sticky notes jutted out of its pages. They were lined up neatly and appeared to be color coded.

“A few months now,” Aimeric said. “My dad always collected old books, just for the appearances. And I always liked hanging out in his library. You know how libraries are. Peaceful. Smell nice. But it was only a year ago that I started to realize – all of these strange things had been happening to me. And I started to read some of the, well, more peculiar books my dad had managed to pick up. Some things started to make more sense. I started reading more seriously.”

“I did my first magic this past summer,” Laurent said. He had started to flip absent-mindedly through the book, seeing what Aimeric had noted down.

“What was it?” Aimeric asked. There was no missing the hunger in his voice.

Laurent remembered the horrible, heavy thud the bed made when it had flipped over. It had been chaos, everything in the room flying around. But it was the flipping of the bed that had made the biggest impression. It had been the noise that caused his mom to run upstairs to see what had happened.

No one at the school knew how Laurent had spent his summer.

Laurent wanted to keep it that way.

“Oh, it was boring,” he said. He kept flipping the pages but wasn’t even bothering to look at the words anymore. He just had to think of a good lie. “Like the window today. I was walking along. In the park. Someone was out practicing lacrosse.”

He had let his mind wander to the events of the day to create a lie and it had come up with Damen. He did not like it but it was too late to come up with a better lie.

“They were practicing lacrosse with a friend. And uh, they tried to pass the ball, but their shot went wide. It was going to hit me. So I flinched and the ball just – changed course, I guess. Midair.”

To conclude the story, he shrugged.

When he looked up, Aimeric was frowning. “And you knew from that that you could do magic? Just from that?”

“I felt – something.”

That was less of a lie. He had certainly felt something the first time he used magic. He did not know what to call it. And it had been so laced with so many other emotions that it had been difficult to tell at the time, but he had time at the hospital to mull it over. By now he was familiar with the feeling of magic.

Aimeric did not look particularly convinced, but Laurent kept his expression neutral, and eventually Aimeric turned his attention back to the books that were in the middle of the room. He began to methodically move a few from one of the stacked piles until he stopped and held up in triumph a small, black book without a clear title.

“This one – Thomas – mentions that he thinks it is common for magic to first emerge as a kind of weak telekinesis. Moving of objects, usually not too heavy, usually not too far. With further refinement, more abilities can manifest themselves. His theory was that for some people who this happens to, it’s so rare and so strange, that they end up blaming something else for what they experience and never realize what’s actually going on. But for some people, they understand it for what it is, and they can develop their powers more. These are the people who become sorcerers. Witches. Whatever name you like. Magic users.”

“Develop their powers more?” Laurent asked.

Aimeric had that smile again. He reached for a different book, heavier this time, and pushed it open to a particular page. He traced his finger halfway down without hesitation, as if he knew this particular section well.

“This is a spell that I learned early on,” he said. His voice was suddenly hushed, like he was sharing a secret. But his smile was all eagerness.

He muttered under his breath and drew his hand slowly in a circle. Pulling his hand into a fist, he opened it and there was a flash of light and a loud bang. Laurent flinched and Aimeric laughed.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, Duncan thought it would be useful for self-defense though.”

“Why did you learn it?”

Aimeric just shrugged. Laurent’s initial surprise was gone and he found himself more annoyed than impressed by the display.

“Must have given your parents a scare when they heard it.”

“It was a good spell to learn while they were gone.” With more than a touch of petulance, Aimeric added, “I showed Jord. He thought it was cool.” He spoke as if to reproach Laurent for not being more like Jord. It was not particularly effective.

“So all of these are, what, spells?” Laurent asked, turning his attention back to the book, and looking warily at the book Aimeric still had in his hands, not particularly eager to see what other “self defense” ideas might lie between its pages.

“This library has everything,” Aimeric answered, breezily. “Astrology, not so interesting. Fortune telling, mostly cranks. Potions. A lot of spellwork.”

“Anything you thought you’d see but haven’t found yet?”

Aimeric considered the question for a half second. “Not really,” he finally said. “Haven’t seen anything to become an animal yet. Not sure I’d like it. Maybe it’s all sneaking out with your best friends to cause mischief, maybe it’s getting stuck as a toad and not being able to change back.”

“No, I don’t know,” Laurent crinkled his nose and tried to think of what magic he had heard about. “Saying the true names of things and commanding them?”

Aimeric shook his head. “Can’t say I’ve run into that.”

“What about conjuring fairies to do your bidding? Familiars? That kind of thing?”

That one earned him an even stronger shake of the head. “Never heard of that. If I call Jord to help me out, does that count as using a familiar?” Aimeric looked pensive. “I think they have to be animals, though. Not just boyfriends.”

Laurent scoured his memory. “Bippity boppity boo?” he finally asked. Aimeric rolled his eyes. “What?” Laurent said defensively. “I don’t know what kind of magic is out there. If you don’t like it, then you should help me get started somewhere.”

“There was a book that I liked when I first started out,” Aimeric turned to the wall and started rummaging through one of the shelves. It took a minute for him to find what he was looking for, but Laurent found he suddenly had patience. “Here it is,” Aimeric moved towards where Laurent was sitting holding a plain brown book. Laurent snatched it out of his hands so quickly that Aimeric laughed.

“Skip the introduction, try the first spell that’s written down,” Aimeric suggested.

Laurent opened the book and had to fight back a sneeze. “It’s dusty,” he complained.

“Haven’t had to use it in a while,” Aimeric shot back.

Laurent let out a small sigh of impatience. He didn’t want to use Aimeric’s training wheels. But he remembered what had happened to his room when he had lost control of his powers. Maybe there were worse things in the world than starting small. “Fine,” he half-muttered under his breath as he brushed aside the dust.

“A Smalle Book of Spells,” he read out loud. The typesetting looked ancient. “Seriously, where does your dad find these?” he asked, but continued before Aimeric could even start to answer. “Ok, first: an easy spell for housecleaning?”

Aimeric shrugged. “This is from the 18th century. They were practical back then.”

“Identify the dust you wish to vanish,” Laurent started. “Well, that shouldn’t be hard in this library,” he said as he looked up, ignoring Aimeric’s indignant protest. “Ok,” he said, after identifying a particular corner of a nearby shelf that looked like it had been badly neglected. “This says to first train yourself to see every spot of dust, and then to think of it gone, and just to repeat ‘pulvis et abierunt’. Is that it? Just a bit of Latin and happy thoughts?”

Aimeric grinned. “Try it and see.”

Laurent looked at the dust again. It seemed perfectly normal. Innocuous. He tried to picture it gone. He felt nothing. Nothing happened. He muttered the words under his breath, as if that might somehow help.

The dust was entirely unaffected.

“You have to really focus,” Aimeric added, apparently fully under the illusion those words were somehow helpful.

Laurent closed his eyes. He tried to forget Aimeric and the stuffy library. Instead, he thought about the window in English class. He thought about how he had felt crying in his room on that fateful summer night. If he had done magic those times, to do it again he just needed to remember what it had been like –

His stomach gave a lurch. He remembered how he felt when the window flew open, when his bedroom furniture went flying. He had felt raw. Exposed, like a nerve. He could not put the sensation into words, because he had been beyond words at the time. He had simply felt, and the magic had happened.

Now he needed to channel that. This time, it was a stupid thing he wanted to do – just some dust, a small spell, a handy spell from a witch long dead who had just wanted to save time cleaning up around the house. It would be hard to channel that same energy for that. But Laurent found himself thinking how it had felt when he was sitting under that tree after the conversation with Aimeric. The feeling that there was more to these strange powers than he knew. That there was so much more he could do.

First, he had to move beyond small spells.

And all that was standing in the way was this bit of dust clinging to the corner of a bookshelf.

Laurent opened his eyes and he saw, really saw, the dust for the time.

He muttered under his breath “pulvis et abierunt.”

Dust, disappear.

And then it was gone.

Aimeric let out a yell that was maybe more surprised than pleased, but he clapped Laurent on the shoulder. “That was amazing! You got the hang of it so quickly.”

“I want to try something else.”

“Oh,” Aimeric laughed, “We’ve got a whole library to try.”

Hours must have passed. Jord got back from his shift and joined them in the library; he mostly watched them rummaging among the shelves and reading with a vague curiosity even as he played a game on his phone to pass the time. Laurent’s mom texted and texted again, and each time she sent him a message he would tell her that he was almost done and that he’d be home soon. It was only when the sun had started to set and Jord mentioned that they all had school the next day could Laurent really be convinced to leave.

“The library isn’t going anywhere,” Aimeric pointed out.


	4. Chapter 4

Everything at school seemed so immaterial the day after. _He could do magic_ , Laurent found himself thinking. But no, it wasn’t that. He had been cursorily aware of that fact for a while. _He could control his magic,_ he found himself thinking, and swallowed heavily at the thought. There was a world of possibilities in that sentence. He just wasn’t sure which of those possibilities he wanted to make real. So he daydreamed his way through his morning classes, and when he went to his locker after lunch to get his workbook for French he was not paying attention to anyone else in the hall.

An obvious mistake, in hindsight.

“Bonjour,” a familiar voice called out. Laurent did not mean to slam his locker as hard as he did in response.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said as he turned to face the speaker, as if that voice could still surprise him.

Damen was smiling. It was an easy smile. Damen always had an easy smile. The tips of Laurent’s mouth rose and quickly fell, a cursory attempt to be polite. Damen was wearing his lacrosse uniform. Tryouts were today.

There was a band around Damen’s right arms. It was the school colors, blue and white. The band wasn’t facing Laurent, but he knew what it said. _Captain._ Auguste had been so proud when the coach had given it to him. His parents had taken the whole family out for a celebratory dinner. Auguste had kept holding the band throughout the dinner, although he tried to hide it. He was worried the cute waitress would see him holding it and think he wasn’t cool.

Laurent realized he wasn’t saying anything in response to Damen, just staring at that armband. It was hard to speak when it felt like all the air had suddenly disappeared from your lungs.

Luckily for him, Damen decided to fill in the pause before it became too awkward. “I studied a bit with Nikandros yesterday. But,” his smile turned suddenly sheepish, “I don’t really think it’s quite the same without you.”

“You seem to be doing just fine without me,” Laurent spat back. Damen’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Besides, I know you don’t exactly have time tonight.”

“Tryouts, yeah,” Damen said. “I was thinking – it could be, you know – you should try out.”

Laurent couldn’t help the way his jaw dropped.

“I don’t play lacrosse,” he finally managed to spit out.

“You’d be good at it if you tried. You have the build for it,” Damen said. Auguste had told Laurent the same thing, exactly twice, the summer before he started high school and then again just before tryouts started his freshman year. Laurent, who much preferred to sit in the bleachers with a book and watch Auguste play than run around in circles chasing a ball with a stick on a field, had laughed at the suggestion both times.

Laurent was not laughing now.

“You’ve got the wrong brother,” he answered icily.

“Laurent,” Damen’s expression was pained. “I know this must be a tough time for you. Even on the team, we miss Auguste, so I can’t imagine –.”

“No, you can’t imagine,” Laurent cut in. “So maybe you should stop trying, Damen. It’s late. I have to go to class.”

He moved to go. Damen didn’t try to stop him.

His head was buzzing, replaying the conversation, all throughout French class. Finally, because he had to do something or else he would explode, he snuck his phone out with five minutes left in class and texted Aimeric from underneath his desk.

_Are we going to practice again tonight?_

Aimeric was almost certainly in class too, but his reply still came quickly.

_My parents are back in town. I’m supposed to go out to dinner with them tonight._

Laurent fought the impulse to write back his first thought, which was, “I don’t care.” Instead, he asked, “Can I borrow a book or something then?”

_I only have the one on me. I was reading it._

Laurent cursed quietly under his breath.

Aimeric seemed to reconsider after Laurent didn’t text back right away. _Just give it back tomorrow, okay?? Don’t lose it or damage it or anything._

_I know how to take care of a book for one night, Aimeric._

_Ok, meet me at my locker after sixth period. I’ll have it for you then._

_Ok, cool._

He wouldn’t get the book until fifth period. That was okay. Laurent would have a few hours with his thoughts, but he’d had to deal with that before. He would survive. A minute passed. He crumbled up a sheet of paper.

Ok, maybe this was going to be a little more difficult than he thought.

He just had to get through sixth period. Just economics and history sat between him and that book. Easy enough. Oh, and avoiding absolutely anything to do with Damen.

 

 

The book that Aimeric gave him was some 400 page monstrosity.

“This is heavy,” he gasped. “Have you been lugging this around all day?”

“What, I’m going to keep a book that valuable in my locker?” Aimeric scoffed. His expression turned serious. “Don’t let it out of your sight, Laurent. It’s really valuable. I want it back ASAP tomorrow.”

Laurent fought the impulse to roll his eyes. “Okay, whatever, you say.” He looked down at the book, his curiosity piqued. “A Nice and Complete Glossary of Potions,” he read the title of the spine out loud. “Potions,” Laurent repeated to himself. His brows furrowed.

“Yeah,” Aimeric said, not even trying to hide the impatience in his voice. “Like I said, don’t lose it.”

Laurent wondered what potions were interesting enough to warrant Aimeric’s attitude, but at least this glossary claimed to be complete: he supposed he would find out soon enough.

He carried that book in his bag through the last class of the day and during the entire walk home. By the time he actually made it to his room upstairs, his shoulders were aching and he wasted no time shucking off the bag and getting the book out. His parents were both out today; he guessed they wouldn’t be home for a few more hours. It was a good time to start seeing what potions could do for him.

Laurent didn’t make it through the entire table of contents before his frown settled firmly in place. This book had an entire section on the care and keeping of livestock. There was a detailed list for ingredients and methods for love potions. There had been a few potions to create luck, but they were filed under the category “Known Frauds”. The whole book appeared to be, in Laurent’s eyes, a total waste of time.

He closed the cover heavily and laid down on his bed.

Four hundred pages, and none of the potions had captured Laurent’s attention at all.

What in the world kind of magic did he want to do?

Aimeric had talked about all kinds of magic. He had made it sound like anything was possible with magic. But everything that Laurent had seen and done so far had been trivial. Opening a window. A housekeeping spell. Esoteric potions that were probably last useful in the 19th century. A world of possibilities, and none that interested Laurent.

_I think you’d be great if you tried playing. If it’s something you’re interested in._

It had been the summer before. Auguste had been sitting in the bleachers next to him. He’d just come from practice. Laurent had said one of the drills looked fun – or rather, he had said one of the drills looked “at least passably less ridiculous than the others” and Auguste had laughed. And then he’d leapt at the chance of trying to recruit Laurent to play for the team.

His words were almost exactly the same ones that Damen had told him today.

“You’d be good at it if you tried,” Damen had said.

“You’d be great if you tried,” Auguste had said.

Or had it been the other way around?

Laurent swore under his breath as the realization set in. He had no idea. The memories had all started to blend together in his mind.

And memories were all he had left of Auguste now.

He sat up in the bed, picked up the book, and started to read the table of contents again.

Something about memories, something about memories –

He wondered if there was a spell that could let him eavesdrop on the lacrosse tryouts. Had the coach mentioned Auguste? He had come to pay his respects to the family not long after the accident but Laurent barely heard him, just a drone of sympathy and apology that had become all too familiar for Laurent. Maybe the coach talked to the team about their great fallen captain, their golden captain. Maybe Auguste’s name wouldn’t be mentioned. Laurent wanted neither. Laurent wanted both.

_A potion to cure minor ailments,_ the book listed. _A potion to put the drinker into a trance, a potion to compel the drinker to tell the truth…_

A potion to compel the coach to tell the truth about Auguste. A potion that would get him to say in front of the entire team that they should have never gotten another captain.

_A potion to help with memory._ Laurent’s eyes finally stumbled upon it. It was listed as appearing on page 233. He flipped the pages quickly and scanned the potion. The steps were written out in clear penmanship. Collect a cup of rain that had never touched the ground. The petals of a forget-me-not that had been picked at midnight. A single almond to be cracked after the drinker had slept with it under his pillow and dreamt about what they wanted to remember. All those ingredients, ground and combined together and drank near a fire. Alone.

Laurent read the instructions and reread them.

“Man, what the fuck is Aimeric _doing_ with his life,” he muttered under his breath.

This all seemed too weird for him. But, he had to ask himself, was it any stranger than trying to explain to his mom that he had not flipped over his bedroom furniture, that the bed had just happened to flip itself?

He tried to remember that day when Auguste had sat next to him in the bleachers. It had been hot, but only a little bit humid. The team did not wear their uniforms when practicing. What shirt had Auguste been wearing as he’d been talking to Laurent? The raggedy gray one that Mom had always been trying to get him to throw out, or the nice blue one that he had gotten for his birthday?

Laurent had no idea.

It was such a minor thing. A tiny, insignificant detail in the whole history of Auguste’s life. But that was how you started to forget, wasn’t it? You forget the little details, and soon you can’t remember the big things either. The way that Auguste smiled. The sound of his laugh. How long before the memory of those things faded too?

Laurent reached for his phone and checked the weather. It had been overcast all day. The weather said he could expect rain not long after midnight. And his mom had planted a garden a few years ago. Had she ever planted forget-me-nots? Laurent didn’t know, but he could check. The almond was easy -- they definitely had some in the pantry downstairs. 

Maybe this was all some elaborate prank or hoax, a silly book of concoctions to help gullible people play pretend.

Or maybe Laurent was going to finally do some real magic.

 

 

It felt like it should be harder. He grabbed a handful of almonds from downstairs, ate most of them, but kept one next to the lamp on his desk. When his parents went to bed, Laurent distractedly told them he was going to stay up a little longer doing some work.

“Don’t stay up too late,” his mom said, as Laurent just made a vague non-committal noise in response.

The world felt strange at midnight. Too quiet. There was no one to see him find the forget-me-nots his mother had planted at the beginning of the season and clip a single one. Exactly at midnight. He picked it by the light of his cell phone, the numbers bright on the screen.

It rained a few minutes afterwards, and he stood outside, collecting the rain in a cup and trying not to get soaked himself.

Laurent had expected magic to be – more difficult, somehow. But there was still one last thing he needed to do. He placed the almond delicately under his pillow and lay down in the dark. Now he just had to make sure he dreamt of Auguste.

That should have been the easiest step of all.

He lay in bed for what felt like an hour, trying to will himself to bed even as his mind lingered on the spell or the way Aimeric talked about the book or how all of a sudden he could remember the way the letters of the lacrosse captain’s armband had started to peel towards the end of the season and how it had driven Auguste crazy. Laurent thought he would never fall asleep, but then all of a sudden he was standing on the beach that felt somehow familiar and Laurent knew in the vague way that dreams work that he was actually dreaming then. 

Except something felt -- off, about this dream. The beach was not right. He recognized it: he’d spent a whole week on this beach, back a few years ago when his family had gone to southeastern Patras for vacation. It had been a great vacation. Laurent remembered it well. The water had been so still and blue that it almost made itself a mirror for the sky.

The same ocean was in his dream. Except now the waves were tall, far too tall for the beach. It looked like a storm, except it was not even windy. The air was stiflingly still.

Laurent was standing on the sand. He could feel the grains between his toes. His parents were distant figures. He was vaguely aware that Auguste was standing in front of him. But he couldn’t see his brother’s face: his brother was resolute in staring at the beach.

Laurent took a step toward the water, which was impossibly dark and inky.

He started to open his mouth, but there was no air in his lung.

Instead, the only sound was Auguste’s voice, or at least, Laurent thought it must be Auguste speaking.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

It should have been an innocuous question. Instead, it just sounded – sad. As if somehow weighted down. And then Laurent woke up, and he was back in his bed. He picked up his cell phone in confusion, half his mind still wondering where the ocean had gone. It read 6:00 AM. He didn’t have to be awake for another thirty minutes. He fell back against the bed. Every muscle in his body felt tense.

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself.


	5. Chapter 5

He gave Aimeric back the book the next day. He had mentioned to Aimeric that he wasn’t quite done with the potion he had wanted to make, but Aimeric had been insistent about returning his book and something about the dream lingered and made Laurent not want to push the point. So instead he recorded the last step verbatim in his notebook for calculus. 

He kept reading and rereading it during second period when the lesson got too repetitive. He understood how to calculate gravitational mass. He’d understood it before the teacher had even started on the lesson.

None of Laurent’s classes were very hard this year. His mother had insisted that he “take it easy this year”, you know, “after the accident” she said, although Laurent had always wondered what part of it was that and what part of it was due instead to how Laurent had spent the last months of his summer. Whatever the reason, Laurent hadn’t really minded it.

Until now.

Easy classes meant more time to think. Laurent didn’t want to think about the dream. It was off-putting. Almost ominous. All the more ominous because it hadn’t felt like he had been remembering his brother.

It had felt like Auguste had really been there.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” a voice that Laurent knew he’d always remember and was still terrified he might one day forget had asked.

Was Laurent sure he wanted to do this?

He decided to give himself until lunch to decide. He spent the rest of the class fantasizing about ripping the page where he had written the potion out of his notebook, telling Aimeric he was done with this strange hobby, and finishing the semester in peace.

Maybe he would take Damen up on that French tutor request.

(Laurent would maybe have to think about that some more.)

But he didn’t tear the page out of his notebook. He told himself he would do it later. Instead, he went to English class.

“Tell us about what happened during tryouts with the towels!” some guys at the front shouted to Mr. Hypermandes. Laurent scowled. Some dumb inside joke with the lacrosse team. Laurent didn’t know what it meant.

Unless he specifically asked Damen about it, Laurent realized with a sudden twist in his gut that he would probably never know.

Mr. Hypermandes didn’t address the comment directly. “If the class is interested, I can say a few words about how the tryouts went at the end of the class.”

Laurent wore out his shoulder raising his hand at everything that day, asking every dumb question he could think of, trying to extend the lesson as long as possible. It didn’t work. A few minutes before the bell was set to ring, Mr. Hypermandes closed the book he had been reading from. “As you may have heard, this year set a new record for the school. We’ve never had such a competitive crowd. Every year it’s a difficult decision, but this year was so much worse than normal.”

It wasn’t competitive before because my brother was there, Laurent wanted to say. He was stronger and faster and smarter than anyone else on the team. That’s why they had made him captain. Laurent bit down hard on his lip to stop himself from saying it out loud. He glanced over and looked at the middle window. Mr. Hypermandes was still talking. He was droning on and on about how excited he was that so many people had shown up and how the people who hadn’t made the cut this year should make sure to try again this year. Laurent kept his eyes on the window. Specifically, he looked at the latch. It was new.

“And I’m sure our new captain is going to do a great job training these new recruits, and hopefully we’ll get to go to nationals this year.”

The window flew open again. The latch had snapped clean in half. Laurent closed his eyes.

He only opened them again when the bell rang and everyone was free to go. He glanced over and saw the quizzical look that Aimeric had giving him from across the room.

 

 

Aimeric had asked him if he wanted to study again tonight. When he didn’t respond at all during lunch, Aimeric sent another text. “Look,” it said, “you’re clearly very strong. You really should learn how to harness it. Think about what you could do.”

It was his second to last period – history – before Laurent finally wrote back. “I want to finish that potion.”

That strange, terrible feeling that he had had in the dream – well, that was just a dream, wasn’t it? It was just his subconscious being nervous. Excitable. And of course he was going to be excitable. He was dabbling in magic.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Auguste had asked. The dream version of Auguste.

He was sure.

He couldn’t keep losing control like he had in class today. And in order for him to get in control, he needed to remember Auguste. Really remember. The potion would let him do that.

Laurent reached for his bag to fetch the notebook where he had written the potion down but frowned as his hand grasped a loose bit of paper. Had the notebook torn? He wasn’t in the habit of keeping loose bits of paper in his bag. He opened the bag and looked inside. Tucked away at the bottom of the bag, there was a small bit of paper. It was neatly and tightly folded. Laurent couldn’t remember folding any of his papers like that recently. Had one of Aimeric’s notes slipped out of the book while he had been carrying it?

Curiosity got the better of him, and he unfolded the paper.

The words felt like a punch to the gut.

_I miss seeing you,_ the note read. _I miss our conversations. I hope you’re doing okay._

The handwriting was a loopy, familiar scrawl. Damen must have pushed the note through the vents of Laurent’s locker and it had found its way into his bag.

“I’m doing fine,” Laurent muttered to himself, somehow impossibly angry and not sure why. “And I’ll be even more fine once I finish this potion.”

 

 

Although Laurent had moved fast to try to avoid both Damen and Aimeric in the halls, he found himself face to face with Jord, who had been sitting outside.

“Laurent,” he called out with a wave. Laurent froze in his tracks, but Jord’s expression seemed untroubled. “Do you need a ride again today?”

“I already told Aimeric I wasn’t going to his place today,” Laurent replied cooly.

Jord shrugged. “Could still give you a ride. It’s no trouble.”

“Is that all you do?” Laurent asked. “Just chauffeur Aimeric and his friends around?”

He hadn’t meant it to sound so much like an accusation. Jord didn’t seem to take it personally, though – he just gave a small shrug. “I figure I got my license, least I can do.”

“I was planning on walking,” Laurent admitted. He hadn’t learned how to drive yet. Auguste had always been the one eager to start driving. Laurent had wanted to wait to get his license. Figured he would always have someone to drive him places if he really needed to go somewhere. Now – well, he didn’t want to think about it. “A ride might be nice.”

“Well, once Aimeric gets ready – oh, never mind, there he is. Aimeric!” Jord called out. Aimeric was looking at something on his phone. Laurent looked back at Jord. His smile was wide. Laurent turned back to Aimeric. He gave Jord a small smile, and then turned his attention back to his phone.

Laurent was wondering just how often he had seen that dynamic – Jord smiling at Aimeric, Aimeric looking somewhere else – when he noticed that Aimeric’s face had suddenly lit up. He was staring at Laurent.

“Have you changed your mind?” he asked breathlessly. “You really should be learning how to control your power, I mean that’s twice already and –”

“No,” Laurent cut him off. “I don’t – I’ll see how I feel tomorrow, okay? But right now I just want to get home and finish this potion.”

Aimeric thought for a second. “Which one did you make?” he finally asked.

“A memory spell,” Laurent said.

Aimeric looked relieved. “Oh, at least that one’s harmless. There were some really dangerous potions in there. I’d be worried if your first potion you were making on your own was something much worse than just a simple memory potion.”

“Well, you seemed to learn just fine on your own,” Laurent muttered under his breath. Aimeric looked like he was going to say something, so Laurent cut him off. “And what do you mean dangerous? Like the animal husbandry potions? I looked through that entire book and I don’t see why you’re so attached to it.”

“It’s useful,” Aimeric answered as if on autopilot. Before Laurent could press the issue further though, he turned to Jord. “So we’re driving him home?”

“Yeah, I can drop you off first or I can drop him off first, whichever you prefer.”

Laurent rolled his eyes at seemingly being left out of this decision, but he figured with Jord he might as well get used to being secondary to Aimeric.

“I’ve never made a memory potion,” Aimeric said, after they’d gotten in the car and were just about to pull out of the parking lot. “What are you trying to remember? Something for a test?”

“Something like that,” Laurent muttered. He didn’t care enough to make it sound convincing. Aimeric let out a huff but said nothing. He turned to Jord and spent the rest of the car ride complaining about his math teacher, while Jord made vaguely sympathetic sounds and laughed at his meanest comments. (“He said find x and I swear I almost circled it on the paper right there. Here it is!” “You should’ve done that. It really would have showed him.”)

Laurent fell so deeply into his own thoughts that he didn’t notice when Jord finally stopped in his driveway. That was a mistake – it gave Aimeric time to turn around from the front seat and start talking.

“You know, Laurent,” he began, “You said you’re not sure about tomorrow or whatever. But I have the feeling that whatever you’re trying to do tonight – it’s not going to be enough. There’s a lot of books in my dad’s library. I’m sure there’s something out there that will help you.”

Laurent moved to grab the door handle. “I’ll let you know,” he finally managed to say. He left the car but stopped in the doorway and waited until Jord drove away. The driveway was empty. His parents wouldn’t be back for a few more hours.

It was as good a time for any to do some magic.


	6. Chapter 6

His family didn’t have a fireplace or anything, but the spell had never specified how large the fire had to be, so Laurent grabbed one of the candles that his parents had kept for special events. Grounding the almond proved more difficult than expected, and he had to use the spine of one of his textbooks. (Hopefully his physics teacher never asked about the odd spot of oil on it.) Finally, he took the flowers and tore them up in a plastic mixing bowl his mom probably wouldn’t miss for a while. 

He sat on the floor beside the candle and eyed the mixture skeptically. It looked brown and mushy and distinctly un-magical. “To Auguste, and better memories,” he muttered to himself as he closed his eyes, thought of that summer day from years ago, and drank the concoction down.

When he opened his eyes, his body felt strangely warm. It was from the sun – he was sitting in the bleachers. Of course it was warm. With the sun high above and no cloud in sight, the heat had gotten to just this side of uncomfortable, and Laurent had been thinking about going inside. The only thing that was keeping him out was –

“You know, that last drill was actually less ridiculous than the others,” he said, as he turned to his brother.

Auguste was sitting on the bleachers next to him. His face glistened with sweat. He was wearing a blue shirt; it was the old team one from the year before. It had gotten soaked through. Today’s practice had been pretty difficult. But Auguste was still smiling.

“Yeah, it is a lot of fun,” Auguste agreed. “Requires you to work a lot with a partner, though.”

Laurent scowled and Auguste laughed.

“That’s the great thing about a book,” Laurent said, and for demonstration purpose he held up what he had been reading. _The Fall of Inachtos_. He had been on page 101. Just starting to get to the good stuff. “No team needed.”

“Everyone needs a team.” 

“I don’t,” Laurent had answered, sincerely.

Auguste had shook his head.

He didn’t understand: Laurent didn’t need a team. Laurent had an older brother.

“You should try lacrosse sometime,” Auguste had said. “I’m sure you’ll like it. You have the build for it. You’d be great. If that’s something you’re interested in.” Laurent had already opened his book up again. Auguste conceded defeat with a laugh. “If that’s something I can drag you away from your books for a minute to try.”

There was the sound of a door opening and a voice called out, “Laurent! Honey! Are you home?”

But that was impossible. There weren’t doors around a field. And why would someone be calling to see if he was home, when he was clearly at practice with Auguste?

Laurent was suddenly aware that he had closed his eyes. He forced them open again. His vision came back slowly. He had fallen asleep on the floor. The candle next to him had burnt itself out.

Laurent raced to put the candle and bowl out of sight. He’d put them back downstairs after his parents had gone to bed. “One sec, mom,” he called out. “I’m just finishing up a problem set here.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out his math homework to put on his desk. The perfect cover up.

He stumbled as he walked down the stairs and had to use the railing for support.

“You’re home early,” he told his parents.

He could see his dad frown. “It’s 7 pm,” he added. Laurent’s parents were both standing just in front of the door. They looked more put together than usual – they must have dressed up to go somewhere. “Your mom texted you that we’d be late today. Did you get the message? Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah,” Laurent said weakly. “I must have – really gotten distracted by something. Totally lost track of time.”

It was the blue shirt, he wanted to say, the one that the whole team had gotten during Auguste’s junior year. It had some kind of snake pattern on it, and his mom had always found it a little bit weird. Auguste hadn’t been wearing the gray shirt or the red one like Laurent had thought after all.

But he couldn’t say that to his parents. They were already giving him such strange looks. Instead, he smiled and mumbled an excuse to go back up to his room.

He stared forlornly at the bowl in which he had made the potion. It was all gone.

 

 

_I have to try that potion again,_ he texted Aimeric the next day.

_Why, you gotta another test or something?_ The response came quickly. Laurent looked at it in confusion until his teacher snapped at him to put his phone away. It was only a few minutes later than he remembered what he had told Aimeric yesterday about the potion.

He waited until he was in the hallway to text back.

_No, I used it for something else. And it was great. The memory was so vivid! Like I was there all over again._

He thought about other memories he could relive. Auguste’s sixteen birthday, when he had just learned how to drive and decided to celebrate by driving Laurent _everywhere_ he could want. The family vacation by the beach – as it really had been, not twisted by some misplaced anxiety.

Aimeric had texted him back. _Well, whatever you were up to, I guarantee you that my dad’s library is going to have more than that dinky little potion._

Laurent thought of going home. He could steal another flower from his mother’s garden. Prepare all the ingredients again. Wait. Go home early tomorrow, grab the candle and bowl. Remember all over again.

And what would he do when he had relived the birthdays and the family vacations?

Laurent had a brief, terrifying glimpse of his future, and it was living in his brother’s past.

Aimeric had talked about better potions. Potions that could do more.

Reliving that memory had brought Laurent so much happiness, but in the end it was only a memory. He wanted something more. He wanted to see his brother again, not just remember the times he had seen him before. He wanted to talk to his brother again, to have new conversations with him. To be able to tell him that he missed him.

Laurent wanted his brother back.

He looked at Aimeric’s text again, seeing it with new eyes. He kept looking at it during the day: during lunch, the period after, and the period after that, until he made up his mind.

_I want to look through your dad’s collection,_ he finally wrote back. _His whole collection._

Aimeric just sent back the thumbs up emoji.

What was the point of magic, if not to make your dreams come true?

 

 

When they got to the library, Aimeric tried to guide Laurent, but eventually he tired of being ignored and just gave up. He sat in the corner, with his book, occasionally sending Laurent a judgmental look, which Laurent studiously ignored.

He started with a stack of books that Aimeric had put aside. He noticed the potions book that he had borrowed was there. He put it aside for now and picked up another book. It was another potions book. Laurent flipped through the pages. Potions to be made with common Patran plants: a sleep aid, a love potion, happiness bottled in a jar, a potion to give your enemies boils. None of those seemed useful, so he put that book aside too.

The next one was an astrology book. Laurent put that one to the side almost immediately. The next one was from the simple book of spells they had practiced with at first – Laurent flipped through it but put it aside too. There was a book on the theory of potions. Too abstract for what Laurent needed.

“That’s a good one,” Aimeric said, almost absentmindedly. “The potion you made worked right the first time, but something more complicated could turn nasty pretty easily. That book goes through some of the most common mistakes.”

Laurent looked at the discarded books. None were ever close to what he was looking for. “I don’t think a potion is what I’m after,” he said.

Aimeric made a disbelieving noise, but didn’t say anything else. It was clear there was a reason for his disagreement: most of the books that Aimeric had put aside were potions books. There was another catch-all potions book. “Potions for birth, life, and love,” the title read. Laurent rolled his eyes. That wasn’t what he wanted at all. Another small potions book right below that one. “To keep a happy home,” it said. Laurent flipped through just to see what had Aimeric so invested. Most of the potions in this book looked like recipes. Only the love potion and some of the cleaning spells looked even remotely magical.

Why did Aimeric seem to like potions so much? Laurent thought about all the books he had seen. There wasn’t that much commonality – except a lot of them seemed useless or trivial. There were also a lot of references to love potions. His mind drifted to Jord. Specifically, the way that Jord looked at Aimeric. Could it be…? But no, Laurent decided. He knew the way that Aimeric looked at Jord.

If you were going to give a guy a love potion, you’d probably at least take a little bit of it yourself too.

Laurent toyed with the idea of asking Aimeric – the idea of love potions was creepy, and he wanted to know that his suspicions were wrong – but the look that Aimeric gave him suggested he was more likely to snap at Laurent than tell him what he needed to know. Some other time, maybe.

“Do you have,” Laurent started, “I don’t know, any book on spells?”

Aimeric looked pensive. “I started off practicing with some spells, but I didn’t find them that useful. But my dad had a book or two. What are you looking for?”

Laurent swallowed heavily. The idea was clear in his mind, but this was going to be the first time saying the thought out loud.

“I want to be able to speak to the dead.”

Aimeric had started walking towards one of the bookshelves. When he heard what Laurent said, he stopped in his tracks, with one hand still raised and skimming the spine of a book.

He was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “This is about your brother.”

It was not a question. Laurent still said, “Yes.” There was no use hiding the truth any longer.

“The memory potion --”

“I used it to relieve a memory I had of my brother, yes.”

His tone was defiant. Judge me, he wanted to say. Maybe if one of your brothers died you’d know how I feel. But then he thought about the way that Aimeric talked about his brothers, and he revised the thought: maybe if you had Auguste as your brother and he was gone from your life too you’d know how I feel.

“I’ve never tried death magic,” Aimeric said, slowly turning his back towards the bookshelf to gaze levelly at Laurent. His voice was soft. “But I’ve read enough warnings about it to know _not_ to try it.”

Laurent didn’t say anything, and Aimeric added, his voice rising, “Laurent, I’m serious. This is dangerous!”

“I’m not trying to do anything stupid,” Laurent finally said. “Is it really that difficult to find something that would let me – I don’t know, try to talk to a ghost or something?”

Aimeric’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll – try to find something. But I think it’s dangerous. Most of the books I’ve read that talk about this go on and on about how you should never mess with the dead. It’s better off just to let them rest.”

“First I’ll find the spell,” Laurent responded, keeping his tone even but resolute, “and then I’ll see how dangerous it is.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Aimeric muttered.

He spent the next hour collecting various books, but didn’t say a word about any of them to Laurent. Finally, Laurent got bored of waiting and decided to see what Aimeric had found for him. “A guide for novice sorcerors,” read the first. “An introduction to magick,” read another.

“Jord,” Laurent called out loudly. “I’m getting tired. Can you drive me home?”


	7. Chapter 7

Aimeric acted like he had the best library on the continent. Laurent didn’t care. If Aimeric wasn’t going to help him, Laurent could always try to find his own sources. The Internet was open to everyone, after all.

He spent the whole weekend looking for sites that could help him. He told his parents he was stressed about a big project due Monday. They largely left him alone after that.

There were a lot of cranks online, Laurent was unsurprised to discover. But he was able to find some semi-reputable sites when he searched for sites that listed the memory potion that he already knew worked. All that was left was to see which of those sites talked about death magic.

The hours blended into each other. The only breaks were Aimeric occasionally texting him. Without fail, every text was just a several hundred character message directly quoting the risks of dark magic or interfering with the dead. At first, Laurent just muted his phone. When he looked at his phone after an hour of searching online and saw 15 new messages, he finally texted back, “I’m not an idiot, okay?”

The texts stopped after that.

The first spell Laurent found that didn’t talk extensively about making pacts for his soul or spilling his own blood seemed simple enough: it was to glimpse the last second of a person’s life. The site that had posted it claimed to be purveying “useful” death magic. Laurent wasn’t sure how he felt about that phrase, but it seemed more useful than anything Aimeric had been able to give him. And there was one spell listed that looked simple enough for a trial run: just a Latin invocation and some incense. 

He had to try it. He had to know if this kind of magic could finally get him what he wanted. But to try this spell in particular, he needed someone whose last moments he could witness. Auguste seemed like a natural choice, but Laurent hesitated. Auguste had died in a car crash. It had happened so quickly. One minute, Auguste would have been alive and driving fine, and the next he might have realized how the rain was going to affect the brakes. And that would have been it. The thought of seeing Auguste in that last minute made Laurent feel ill.

After a few hours wracking his brain, he decided to go to the cemetery where Auguste was buried. He carefully copied the spell onto a page from his notebook, tore it out, and put the paper in his pocket. Incense was also easy – his mother liked to burn some for the headaches she was prone to getting. Laurent was able to sneak a stick and lighter without anyone noticing. The only thing he told his parents before heading out was that he needed a quick break from study and where he intended to go. They asked if he wanted company.

“Not today,” he answered, and forced his mouth into a passable imitation of a smile.

“Let us know,” his mom started, looking hesitant, “if you ever want to talk. Or anything. We’re always here for you.”

“I know,” Laurent answered. His voice felt far away to his own ears.

Laurent couldn’t drive and the ceremony was a long walk away. It gave Laurent a lot of time to think about his plan. A lot of time to read and reread the spell, mouthing the words to himself in silent practice. A lot of time to wonder if there were other, maybe less dangerous things he should be doing.

Who knows, he could have been learning lacrosse right now.

The cemetery gates were open. Laurent wandered the grounds aimlessly. He made sure to stay away from the parts that he was by now most familiar with. It was an odd kind of comfort, to walk amongst tombstones of people he did not know. After enough walking, one tombstone caught his attention – it was more faded than the rest. Laurent knelt down for a closer look. The name had almost entirely been smoothed away, along with the inscription. Only the first two letters of the year of birth remained – a silent reminder that this woman had lived almost two hundred years ago, and even her last memorial was fading away.

Laurent took the moment to look around. There was no one around him. A small congregation looked to be about half a mile away, and it seemed doubtful that they would bother him. Remembering how the last bout of magic had left him lying on the floor, he took the precaution of sitting down before getting started this time. Slowly he took the incense and lighter out of his pocket and unfolded the paper.

The walk to the cemetery had been long. Laurent had had a lot of time to think about what he was going to do. And he was certain – he had to understand if there really was magic that could let him see the dead. Talk to the dead. Anything to bring him closer to his brother again.

He lit the incense and read the words aloud in a clear, calm voice.

When he had finished reading the words, he lifted his head. The world suddenly seemed much dimmer. He was inside. It was mid-afternoon, but thick curtains kept the sun from coming inside. There was a woman on the bed. She was staring straight in front of her, and as Laurent watched she gave a cough that shook her ribs.

Laurent felt the start of a cold sweat. The spell must have worked, this must be her –

No sooner had he thought the words than the woman in the bed turned and stared directly at him. He gave a small start and looked around. There was no one else in the room. She was alone and waiting to die.

And she was looking directly at Laurent.

His chest suddenly seemed too empty. He could feel the air rattling in it. The woman coughed again, and Laurent felt the strange urge to cough too. He had not been coughing this morning. Was this part of the spell, to not just see the last moments of a person’s life but to feel what they felt too?

A cold terror gripped Laurent and he did not know whether it was his or the woman’s. She gave another long, rattling cough. It was harder and harder to get air back in his lungs. Another breath, and then –

He felt a jolt at his stomach and he was lying in the grass again. The incense had all been burnt up, but there was no smoke. Laurent laid on the grass for a moment. He breathed in and out. His lungs felt normal again.

He looked at the tombstone. Marie, he wanted to say. He knew her name now. Her name had been Marie, and she had died while waiting for her husband to return with medicine from the closest town. Laurent reached out to touch the tombstone. When you knew what to look for, it was easy to see the faint remains of the letters of her name. He traced out the words, hoping somehow to carve them back into the stone again.

His head was spinning, and his side complained a little about the fall. But otherwise, once fear had started to loosen its grip on him, Laurent was surprised to realize that he actually felt fine. The magic had worked, and it hadn’t been so dangerous after all. He took his phone out and found the site again. He spent almost an hour reading every spell on the site until his phone started to complain about a charge. It didn’t matter: he had found a spell that would do what he wanted. The ingredients didn’t seem particularly difficult to acquire, except one.

He got up and texted Aimeric quickly, hoping his phone still had enough for two last messages:

_I did a small spell and it was fine._

_Do you know what veratrum is?_

Aimeric’s response was uncharacteristically quick. _Let’s talk tomorrow. I have what you need._


	8. Chapter 8

Jord and Aimeric were unusually tight-lipped during the drive to Aimeric’s house the next day. At first, Laurent thought it might be a blessing in disguise, but eventually the silence started to wear on him. He finally asked, “So, veratrum – is this also something that your dad has hidden away in his library?”

“No,” Aimeric answered curtly. “I’ve been collecting ingredients for potions. I’ve just gotten in the habit of asking my parents to give me exotic plants when they travel or when they have to cancel plans on me because of work. Neither of them really ask why, but I think my mom thinks I’m into scrapbooking.”

The three of them fell back into silence again after that. When they got to Aimeric’s, he walked them up the stairs, but instead of heading to the library they went to Aimeric’s room. Laurent had never been before. It was neatly organized: the bed was made, papers and books and clothes put away. And it was overflowing with clearly-labeled jars and cans that had more flowers and spices and liquids than Laurent thought possible.

Aimeric really did like potions.

He went on his tiptoes trying to reach a jar on the top shelf; Jord eventually had to grab it for him. But when Aimeric turned back to Laurent with the jar in hand, he made no move to give it to Laurent.

“I know what veratrum is. It’s deadly. I’ve only used it in incredibly small amounts, and only the root, which isn’t as poisonous.”

“I need the flower,” Laurent said impatiently. “I’m just going to burn it, I’m not going to eat it.”

He had spent a lot of time during the morning looking up the effects of veratrum. It had not been a reassuring morning. But burning the flower shouldn’t be harmful.

Probably wouldn’t be harmful.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Aimeric asked. Laurent took a step forward, and Aimeric held the jar closer.

It had been a long night for Laurent. His mind had been overflowing with plans and ideas and concerns and things that could go wrong and things he desperately wanted to come true, and his lungs still felt the rattle of a dying woman’s last breath. He had no patience left for Aimeric.

“Are you serious right now?” Laurent snapped. “You’re going to lecture me on the ethics of magic after what you’ve been doing?”

The words did not have their intended effect. Aimeric just looked confused.

“What I’ve been doing?” he echoed. Starting to raise his voice, he continued, “Unlike some people, I haven’t been playing around with dark magic. In fact, lately the only thing that I’ve been doing is looking up ways to get it through your thick skull that what you are doing could very well kill you!”

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” Laurent let out a bitter laugh. “Your books. All of them. These potions you’re so interested in. There’s always one thing they have in common – love potions. You’ve been working with love potions. And maybe you don’t consider those dark magic, but they sure as hell aren’t good!”

For once, Laurent had made Aimeric well and truly speechless. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His expression had gone pale. Laurent took the opportunity to grab the jar from his hands and take out the single veratrum flower that had been inside.

The silence was interrupted by a sudden, quiet laugh. Laurent turned around. Jord was standing by the door. In the heat of the moment, Laurent had completely forgotten about him. He was smiling.

“Aimeric hasn’t been playing with love potions.”

Silence greeted his words.

“I would know,” Jord continued, and Laurent could see that he was staring right at Aimeric. His tone might have seemed confident, but there was the beginning of suspicion in his voice.

Laurent turned back to Aimeric too. “Did you use a love potion on Jord?”

“No,” Aimeric snapped.

“Then why have you been reading up on them? Why this interest? He’s already over the moon for you, you wouldn’t have to use a love potion --”

“It. Wasn’t. For. Him.” Aimeric spoke the words through gritted teeth. Laurent thought he had seen Aimeric mad before, but there was a cold fury in his eyes when he looked at Laurent. Venom almost dripped from his tongue as he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So if it wasn’t for him, who was it for?”

“Get out!” Aimeric spat out. He moved towards Laurent, made to push him or worse, although Laurent sidestepped easily. “Just get out of here! I don’t know why I even ever bothered with you. You’ve caused nothing but trouble. You’re so intent on killing yourself over your poor, perfect dead brother. Well, that doesn’t mean you can drag anyone else into your problems!”

“Don’t talk about my brother like that,” Laurent spat out. “You’re a coward who's obsessed with trying to get someone who doesn’t love you. You don’t deserve to talk about my brother. I’m out of here.” His hand was on the door as he said the words. With one last look at Jord, he added, “If you had any sense, you would be too.”

Sheer fury propelled him down the steps and out of the house. Aimeric lived about two miles to his home. He didn’t care. He didn’t care if he ever saw Aimeric again, honesty. He looked down at the single flower he was holding in his right hand.

He had gotten what he needed.

 

 

“You said ‘it wasn’t for him’,” Jord said slowly. He had waited to talk until after the front door had slammed, which meant that Laurent had really left the house. _Good riddance_ , Aimeric thought angrily. “But you didn’t deny that you made love potions.”

“Jord, I,” Aimeric started. His chest felt strangely tight. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Aimeric had used so many variations of that sentence before during the relationship. It had always worked. Jord had had questions before, but Aimeric just had to say those few little words, and Jord would stop.

Tonight, Aimeric wasn’t so sure.

Jord opened his mouth and closed it again with a shake of his head. Aimeric thought idly that he had never actually seen Jord angry before. But now there was definitely something darkening his normally calm expression.

“I’d like to talk about it,” he finally said.

“I’m tired,” Aimeric replied quickly. “I just had that big fight with Laurent, I don’t want to have a fight now.”

The tension in Jord’s shoulders was visible. Aimeric realized suddenly that he didn’t like seeing Jord this upset. “Why don’t we – we can talk later,” he hastened to add. “I just – I just want to be alone right now.”

“Fine,” Jord said. His voice was curt. “You want to talk later, we’ll talk later.”

Jord walked out the door. Aimeric followed a few steps behind him and watched him walk down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he looked up at Aimeric, shook his head slightly, and then turned and walked out the front door.

Aimeric was surprised how much it hurt to hear that door close a second time.

Aimeric had met Jord last year because they were in the same math class, even though Jord was a year older. At first, Aimeric had flirted with Jord because it was fun to see how it made him blush. Then, they started doing a little more than flirting, and Aimeric had kept going with it because it was fun.

It was never supposed to be more than fun.

Watching Jord leave like that had not been fun.

He tried to chase the thought away. He forced himself to think about the latest flowers that his parents had gotten for him last night. They had missed another parent-teacher conference; Mr. Hypermandes had been annoyed, but Aimeric had been glad because that meant he finally got the white peonies he had been asking about for weeks. They were the last ingredient in a potion that he had been planning to make tonight.

Laurent had been right: it was a love potion. But Aimeric had been telling the truth. It wasn’t meant for Jord. He had someone else in mind.

The Regent had first visited the deFontaine household when Aimeric was fourteen. At the time, he had been one of the senior partners in the company where Aimeric’s father worked. He had been working with his father on some big project at the time. But even though he had been very busy, he always found time for Aimeric.

(No one had ever found time for Aimeric before, not like that, not when there were deals to close and three older brothers to look after.)

Sometimes the Regent asked Aimeric to do things that made him uncomfortable. Things that he told Aimeric he would understand when he was older. And – he had been very clear on this last point – things that Aimeric should never tell anyone about.

The next year, Aimeric got taller, his voice broke, his math class was much harder, his brother had graduated, and the Regent was nowhere to be found. He asked his father about him so often that finally he told Aimeric not to mention the Regent again.

But Aimeric was used to being overlooked, and he was patient. He figured he just needed to wait. The Regent would come back.

And now he was coming back. A few months ago, his father had mentioned that all the senior partners were going to be in town for a big conference. It was Aimeric’s chance.

He collected the ingredients that were in his room slowly. Freshly cut grass. The petals of the peonies, which Aimeric tore off carefully. He walked downstairs to where the remaining ingredients were kept. Honey from the pantry. Fresh milk, not pasteurized, from the fridge. (That had been a pain to find.)

Aimeric collected all the ingredients in a large bowl from the kitchen before retreating back to his room. That was his preferred place to make love potions. He was very familiar with the process by now – he had been trying to make a love potion for the past two months. But there was something about love potions that seemed to elude him. The first time he had tried, the liquid had turned black and noxious. He had had to air out the library for a week to get the smell out. The second time he tried, it had turned clear, like the instructions had said, but it didn’t smell like anything. It was supposed to smell like wildflowers and posies. He drank it anyway, just to see what would happen, and it tasted like water. The third time he tried, it turned purple and smelled faintly odd, but he’d gotten so frustrated that he tried it anyway. He ended up with an awful stomach ache.

Jord had taken care of him, that last time.

He thought about that last time as he started to mix these ingredients together. The last ingredients were the petals. They had to be plucked while thinking of lost love, and when adding the petals to the mixture, the spell said to think of the love that the other person had given to you.

Aimeric tried to think of what the Regent had said to him, back when he was fourteen.

“You seem to be willing to get into an awful lot of trouble for all this,” his mind supplied.

But the Regent had never said that to Aimeric. It had been Jord who said those words, when he was tucking Aimeric into bed after that last bad potion. Aimeric remembered how he had let out a little laugh and curled against Jord until he fell asleep. He had felt better in the morning.

The Regent had smiled at him, asked him how he was doing, listening to him when he answered. He had always nodded absent-mindedly when Aimeric spoke, but Aimeric hadn’t thought that was so strange at the time. He was pretty used to that.

But in the last year, he had gotten so used to Jord listening to him and looking after him that he had stopped noticing when Jord did it.

Aimeric’s hand had frozen in place over the potion. One of the petals fell through his fingers. The potion hissed and boiled as the petal fell in. The potion was supposed to be clear and calm.

“Fuck,” Aimeric whispered under his breath.

He was suddenly aware of just how badly he had messed things up, and not just the love potion.


	9. Chapter 9

Laurent’s parents were both home by the time he got back, and they looked surprised to see him.

“Where were you?” his mom asked, “I thought you were going to be out with your friends. I know they usually drop you, but I didn’t hear a car --”

Laurent shrugged, making sure the hand that held the flower didn’t leave his pocket even as he did so. “I decided to walk today. Cleared my head.”

His mom frowned. “Was it a long walk? Why didn’t you call?”

“It wasn’t that long,” Laurent lied. And then, while he was at it, he lied again, “There’s this English project I was going to work on, though.”

And over the sound of his mother repeating that dinner would be ready soon and he really should be down soon, he walked up to his room and pulled up the spell again on his laptop and read over the ingredients again.

The veratrum flower.

Blood, sliced from the wrist.

A single tear.

An item of the deceased that they had treasured. This was to be burned.

The spell to combine them had to be done exactly at midnight in front of the grave of the deceased.

The first item Laurent already had, and the next two would be easy enough to gather. He could do the spell tonight. The only thing that was giving him pause was the very last item: something of Auguste’s to burn. Laurent’s parents had sold or donated a lot of Auguste’s items, but a fair amount of stuff still lay where he had left it so many months ago.

Auguste’s room was next to Laurent. The door was kept shut. Laurent tried to avoid the room, and he knew that, for all they might deny it, his parents did too. But tonight was not a night to avoid these things. Laurent checked downstairs quickly to make sure his parents weren’t going to disturb him, and then he opened the door to Auguste’s room as quietly as possible.

The air felt different in this room. Heavier, somehow. Stale.

Laurent took a moment to look around. This was the longest he had been in this room since the week of Auguste’s death. The thought made his mouth taste metallic and his tongue strangely heavy. The hairs raised on the back of his neck.

He had only one thought: he should not be here. He should not be doing what he came into this room to do.

But that little voice in his head sounded too much like Aimeric’s warnings about death magic. If it felt unnatural somehow to be here, well what he intended to do tonight was unnatural. If it felt wrong to take something of his brother’s to destroy, the reward would be worth the price.

Laurent forced himself to look around and see what items of Auguste might work for the spell. His desk seemed like a good spot. It still had a lot of his papers stacked on top of it. He just had to choose one paper, he told himself.

He stepped up to the desk and understood why his parents had left this stack of paper behind. On top of it was Auguste’s college acceptance letter. Laurent’s breath caught in his throat. Auguste had been so happy when he got that letter. It was a good school – “an amazing opportunity”, everyone told Auguste. An opportunity he would now never get to experience. Laurent couldn’t take this letter. His parents would be livid if they found out that Laurent had destroyed that. Laurent himself could barely contemplate doing such a thing. 

But that was the point of the spell, wasn’t it? A sacrifice. To see a ghost.

Laurent looked at the paper underneath. It was looseleaf, and Auguste’s handwriting was unmistakable. “Possible team captains”, he had written. A few names were written down, with columns labeled “pros” and “cons” below them. Some of the names Laurent recognized or at least vaguely remembered. But there was one name that he knew and he was not at all surprised to see on the list – Damen. When it came to “pros”, Auguste had written “great with teammates” and “natural leader”. Under cons he had only listed one. “Laurent’s virtue.”

Laurent couldn’t help the disbelieving laugh that slipped past his lips.

“My virtue, huh,” he said, only to realize he was talking to an empty room.

It felt like Auguste should be here. Of course for months it had felt like Auguste should have been here. But this was different. There was something about this little scrap of paper that felt very – right. It felt personal. It reminded him more of Auguste and what he had left behind than even that prized admission letter.

Auguste had loved the team. He had agonized over who would succeed him. And, Laurent thought, as he read the comments next to Damen’s name over and over again and tried to memorize the shape of it, he had always been thinking and worrying about Laurent while doing so.

It would take a real sacrifice to see a ghost.

Laurent grabbed the sheet of paper, folded it into his pocket, and walked out of his brother’s room.


	10. Chapter 10

Laurent snuck out again after his parents went to bed. He left early enough that he could be sure to make it to the cemetery with time to spare. It was a fast walk. There was no one else around: the streets were empty.

It gave him too much time to think. He looked up at the sky. A full moon peaked out from a stray cloud. According to at least one book he read, that was supposed to be auspicious for magic. 

A cold wind bit at him and Laurent hugged his jacket a little tighter. He looked down at his phone, reading the instructions over again for what felt like the hundredth time while surreptitiously looking at the clock. It helped stave off the doubt and the anxiety that were threatening to eat him alive.

Standing alone in a graveyard counting the seconds until midnight did not strike him as particularly auspicious, the moon be damned.

_This is crazy_ , some distant part of him thought. He did not have to be here. He could still go home. Sneak back into bed. Put the paper back on Auguste’s desk. Throw out the ingredients he had gathered. Pretend nothing had ever happened.

Go back.

Go back to what? Settling for memory potions? Forgetting his brother?

Laurent took a deep breath. It felt ragged against his ribs. But he knew. He knew that if there was even a slight chance this spell would work, he would do it. He had to do it.

Two minutes left.

Laurent knelt down and laid out the ingredients in front of Auguste’s grave. His eyes traced the familiar words of the gravestone almost unseeing. He didn’t need to read them now; he could almost recite them in his sleep. “Beloved brother and son.” As if that could do justice to the person Auguste had been.

Laurent gathered the ingredients in the bowl. The last item was the paper, which had to be burned. Laurent held it above the bowl and watched his phone. When the clock said midnight, he clicked the lighter, watched the flame lick up the paper, thought of that summer day so long ago on the bleachers, and dropped the paper into the bowl. The fire spurted and started to spread. 

For half a second, nothing happened. Laurent waited, his breath baited.

The wind blew and the little fire flickered.

Laurent felt the beginning of what suspiciously felt like disappointment.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he heard from behind him. “You always were stubborn when you set your mind on something.”

The voice sounded flatter somehow than Laurent remembered and more distant, like it was spoken over a bad connection. But it was still unmistakably familiar. Laurent thought he could grow to be a hundred years old and not forget that voice.

He turned around and Auguste was standing behind. Laurent stood up and took a step forward before he truly understood what he saw. He had been facing away from the cemetery gates before. When he turned, he could see Auguste – and he could see the cemetery gates through him. This Auguste was barely there, more a shadow suggesting form than the brother Laurent remembered.

“There is no magic that will bring the dead back to life,” Auguste said. He – or at least this strange mirage of him – gave what might have been a half-smile. “And Laurent, I think you would be wise to stop trying.”

“I miss you,” the words spilled out of Laurent’s mouth. He was barely aware of having spoken. He could not stop staring.

It was getting harder to see Auguste. The more he looked, the less it seemed like Auguste was there at all. It was like trying to trace a tendril of smoke through the air. Perhaps that was the nature of the spell – the harder you tried to see the ghost you summoned, the less corporeal they became. Laurent tried to look at the ground instead, but his eyes kept trailing upwards.

“I know,” Auguste told him. “I wish I could have stayed longer. But Laurent, we had some good years together. And you have so many good years ahead of us. Don’t throw them away trying to relive the past.”

If this was just a limitation of a spell, that he could not really see Auguste, another spell, a better one had to be out there –

Auguste was trying to warn him against doing just that.

Laurent had not said anything, but his brother had always known him so well.

Laurent tried to look into his brother’s eyes. The illusion was already going so fast, it was hard to tell if he succeeded.

“I don’t want to let those years go,” he said. Ever since the accident, Laurent had been trying to hold onto the years he had before them. But time still insisted on moving forward. It was horrible. But why should it have to keep moving forward? Particularly when Laurent had magic to command -- 

“Laurent, you could always do anything you set your mind to. You were always so capable. But please, for my sake, for your sake – don’t put your mind to the task of trying to bring me back. It is difficult for a spirit to come back into this world. Even coming here – and barely being here – is hard. For my sake and your own, Laurent, please. Leave me buried. Go out and live your life.”

“How can I, when you didn’t get a chance to?” The words were hard to force out of his throat.

“The only thing I regret is that I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.” The words were growing fainter. Laurent tried to move closer, knowing it would be useless. “Laurent, I love you. And this is my goodbye.”

“Auguste – goodbye.”

Laurent was talking to empty air. He looked down at the bowl. The candle had burned itself out.

He stayed at the cemetery for a long time afterwards, sitting on the ground and staring up at the moon.

“I thought you were supposed to help me do magic,” he whispered to it. He had wanted to see his brother, but had gotten a shadow instead. And there had been so much more that he wanted to say. All he wanted was more time. All he had ever wanted was more time with his brother.

The moon, of course, said nothing in its defense. 

After a long time, Laurent stood up and started the long walk home. His limbs ached. School would be starting in a few hours. When he got home, he was quiet as he snuck back into bed, and the only thing that he stopped to do was wash the dirt and the tears that had stained his face.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! If you've read this far, thank you so much, and I hope you've enjoyed the story! If you ever want to hit me up with Captive Prince headcanons, [ my ask box on tumblr is always open.](desastrista.tumblr.com/ask)

It took three cups of coffee and it felt like he was dragging his whole body behind him whenever he walked, but Laurent made it to school the next morning. The events of the last twenty four hours played over and over again in his mind in fits and pieces like a discordant symphony. He could barely pay attention during his first two classes. He tried not to speak to anyone, and anything that people said to him just filtered from one ear to the other.

Laurent knew there was a decision he had to make. He might have to keep making that decision over and over again. But by the time third period rolled around, Laurent had made up his mind.

Aimeric left English class too quickly for Laurent to catch him right away, but he followed him to his locker. Laurent didn’t know whether he was surprised or not to find Jord standing with him at his locker. They were talking – standing a little further apart than they had before yesterday, maybe, but still talking.

It was Jord who noticed him first. “Laurent,” he called out. “Are you headed off to class?”

Aimeric turned around quickly. His mouth was set in a harsh line, but his eyes lacked the animosity that Laurent had expected.

“I’m just –,” he started. He closed his mouth and tried again. “I just wanted to say --” The words were not coming easily to him. He shook his head and tried again. “I just wanted to say that I was sorry. I was dabbling in death magic. It was – well, I’m not sure it was really a mistake. But I’ve learned. I’m not going to do it again.”

“You weren’t the only one messing with magic they shouldn’t have,” Aimeric admitted. He looked uncomfortable with the admission. “I’m sorry for yelling at you yesterday.” He looked at Laurent only briefly; Laurent could see how his gaze snuck back to Jord. “I think I might be taking a break from magic for a while. Definitely from potions.”

Laurent nodded. “I might need a break, too.” He could not help but give a wistful sigh. “Maybe sometime in the future, though.”

There was a world of possibility with magic. Laurent knew this. But he had to make sure he remembered that just because something was possible didn’t mean it was a good thing to do before he went back to his spells and potions.

He also had to make sure that he didn’t neglect the world of possibilities that existed outside magic.

Damen had liked surprising Laurent at his locker. Today, finally, Laurent decided to return the favor, and was waiting for him at his own locker right after lunch.

“Laurent,” Damen said, clearly surprised to see him. There was no missing the hesitation when he spoke, and Laurent felt a pang of guilt for not responding earlier to the note. The pang was eased when he saw that Damen, almost despite himself, had started to smile at seeing Laurent. “I can’t say I expected you here.”

“I’ve had a crazy couple of days recently,” Laurent started. Damen raised an eyebrow in expectation of a story, but Laurent did not think these last few minutes before the bell rang lent themselves to a full explanation of spells, love potions, and summoned ghosts. Instead, he said, “So I haven’t had a chance to get back to you about your request.”

“My request,” Damen repeated.

Damen was wearing his lacrosse jersey, complete -- of course -- with the captain’s armband. He bent down to pick a book out of his locker, and Laurent took a moment to look the uniform over.

_Pros:_ he thought to himself. _Great with teammates. Natural leader._

_Cons: Laurent’s virtue._

Laurent had been holding on so strongly to the idea of his brother, the golden brother, lacrosse team champion. It was in its own way an attempt to do magic: if he refused to acknowledge that the world had changed, he could make it go back to the way it had been before. But that was not going to work. Laurent would learn to live without his brother. There were going to be other captains for the lacrosse team. And Damen would be a great captain. Laurent didn’t know anything about lacrosse, but he was sure of that. After all, Auguste had wanted Damen to succeed him. 

And Auguste had always been right about Damen -- particularly when it came to his habit of flirting with a certain younger brother. 

“You said you wanted to be tutored in French,” Laurent said, “Do you think you still need to be? Or are you going to skip that crap story and actually ask me out after all this time?”

It took Damen a moment to realize what he was saying – or rather, he spent a minute thinking he must have misheard, or that Laurent wasn’t being serious, or that he was actually still in a dream and would wake up and have to go to school soon – but when he finally realized that Laurent was being sincere, his smile went wide.

They texted during the next few periods and decided their first date would be going to get some ice cream. But, Damen was sad to admit, it would have to wait until after practice. Laurent told him that was okay – he could always stay and watch.

He watched Damen lead the team in drills from the same bleachers where he had watched Auguste so long ago (and not so long ago, thanks to a certain potion). And if Laurent felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, or the sense that there was a figure watching from out of the corner of his eyes that he couldn’t quite stare at directly – well, he was happy that he knew enough to be confident it wasn’t all just in his imagination.


End file.
